Recaps of Trips that People Probably Don't Care About

Category Archives: Bouldering

Hueco time is coming up soon. 12 days and a 1,239 mile drive are all that separates me from another week in one of my favorite places in the world (at least from the places I’ve been). Here’s why I’m pickin’ up what Stanley’s puttin’ down in his Pretzel Day spiel, and I feel like the climbers (especially the fresh graduates with new-found careers) will feel me on this one.

If you’re anything like me, your average day probably goes a little something like this. You start out with an alarm that goes off about 10 minutes earlier than you want it to every single morning. You wake up and grab a quick bite to eat and hop in the whip (no doubt a fierce, road-destroying 4-door sedan that would be the object of any middle-aged, comb-over-rocking-nobody’s envy, hopefully in a hyper-dope color like sea-foam green). You make a drive to work that somehow becomes less and less eventful every day. You probably get stuck behind a couple of school buses along the way. It’s okay, you’re a G, you’ll make up for it cause you will absolutely MERK on any yellow light that gets in your way. No mercy. Eventually, you make it to the office and settle into your desk for the long haul. You ask a co-worker how their day’s going and they respond with the typical “I’m still above ground, must be doin’ alright” or “Just another day in paradise”. You throw up in your mouth a little bit, but keep it together, cause Doug sent you a dope snapchat vid this morning with a psyche vid from the cold porcelain donut he’s warming up somewhere in the great white Northeast. For the next 4 hrs, you go hard in the paint on spreadsheets and call lists. Just when you think you’re about to explode, it’s 11:30, lunch time. Whip out that turkey sandwich, and since you splurged at the winn-dixie this week, you got muenster cheese on that B, now you’re on some serious N.L.S. homey. While you woof down the sandwich, yogurt, and banana, you manically browse through your usual list of climbing blogs. Catch a couple of mediocre vids on DPM, or maybe it’s a particularly good day and there’s some new footy of one of the mutants out in Colorado climbing some V-wicked project. Scope 8a real quick, “oh look, Adam logged something this weekend without topping out and took full points for it”, then you know what time it is. Hit that fool with some 8a-hatemail, because no doubt he’s paper-chasin’ just as hard as you are in his cubicle 300 miles away, and we all know there’s nothing a climber loves more than opening up his 8a inbox only to find some mockery from a friend. 12:00 rolls around, the sandwich is gone and the post-lunch cup o’ joe is making real quick work of your GI system. Hightail it to the king’s throne and enjoy 15 minutes of silence and phone games while you drop bombs. Now that you’ve prolonged your stay in the oval office as long as reasonable, it’s time to trudge back to the desk and make the bossman happy. Turn up the Black Keys radio (to an appropriate listening volume, of course) and get back after it, son. There are documents to be printed/stapled, spreadsheets to be cleaned up, and clients to solicit. Another 4.5 hrs pass with relative ease, thanks to brain-numbing tasks and a little help from the homies on g-chat. It’s 4:45 now, and the end is in sight. You start to label your file folders, organize your pencils, or anything else that will keep your eyes from being glued to the clock for the next 15 minutes. 4:53. On the home stretch. OH NOOOOOOOO here comes bossman to remind you of that thing he told you to do but you forgot because you were daydreaming about how you can dyno like Jimmy Webb when really you’re just a mediocre slab climber, and now he needs it before the end of the day and you already shut down your computer but you gotta make it happen because you don’t have enough vacation left to cover the climbing trip you reaaaaaaalllly wanna take at the end of the year and you need to come out of this week smellin’ like roses, yadiddamean? So you bear down. You type with a fury of a Kenyan trackstar/death metal guitarist on bath salts. By 5:14 you’ve got it all wrapped up. Boom, save, submit, handled. Later boss, hasta manana. Your sanity is slowly being restored as you walk down the hall, out the door, into the parking garage, and finally settle into the cloth seat of your “musclecar”. You pull the ipod out, and bump “Forgot About Dre” to get amped up on the short drive to the climbing gym. You roll in, change out of your khaki’s and button-down shirt, and unleash every ounce of frustration you can muster from the long day on the red taped problem, only to punt the last move 4 times. You salvage the session by climbing every V3 in the gym and maybe even hitting a quick hangboard/abs session before you hop back in the sea-foam-green-4-cylinder-road-devouring-hellbeast and drive back to your 1 bed/1 bath apartment. At least it’s late enough that you missed rush hour traffic, probably because you stayed at the gym way longer than you should have. When you get back home, you quickly whip together something for dinner and settle in for a couple of episodes of Always Sunny or Futurama or Trailer Park Boys or one of the few other remaining decent TV shows on Netflix. Before long, it’s 10:00, and you know if you don’t get to bed soon, 5:45’s gonna be hard to deal with. The next morning, your alarm goes off about 10 minutes earlier than you hoped…

Life goes on like this for most days of most weeks. Sure, after 5 days, we get the ever-welcome weekend, which offers a couple of days of relief (assuming it’s not raining both days, which seems to be the norm in the DUUURURRRRRRRTTTYYYYY SOUFFFFFF). For the most part, though, it’s just enough to keep us truckin’ through another work week.

Then there’s Hueco week.

One week every year, for the past few years, I’ve made it a point to hop in the sea-foam-green-speed-machine and drive out West. We start driving at 3 or 4 PM and finish driving at 3 or 4 PM the next day. The destination? The home of the pumpiest, juggiest, longest, most-sickest roof climbs imaginable. The windy, dusty, quiet, hot-then-cold, bizarre, desolate, amazing desert. The Mecca of American bouldering. Hueco Tanks State Park and Historical Site.

For a week, school doesn’t matter. Work doesn’t matter. I’m approaching my mid-20’s furiously still lacking any sort of serious relationship with a member of the fairer sex, but that doesn’t matter. Childhood George would be enraged that I’m not an astronaut driving a Corvette with Cindy Crawford on my arm, but he’d be proud this week. This week? It’s Hueco week… and I like Hueco week.

Here’s a couple of our old Hueco vids and one from a friend, Michael Rosato. I hope everybody reading this (both of you) finds their Hueco Week, whatever that may be.

Arkansas definitely lived up to expectations. Can’t wait to get back and put some time into harder climbs out there. Kung Fu is rad. I enjoyed the Ranch as much as Hueco. The only bummer is the volatile weather… you have to go so far west to get away from the precipitation…

Speaking of Hueco, we’ve got a trip coming up at the end of this month! Other than that there’s not a lot of action on the radar besides work and climbing on that sweet southeastern sandstone as often as weather permits. I’ve got my work cut out for me in the durty souf this winter. If it’ll get cold and dry for a few weekends in a row there’s bound to be some sick-nasty sendage. Still grade chasin’ that elusive 7A+… bands a’ make her dance, let’s get it son.

It’s been a couple months! Kinda hard to believe, it feels like they’ve flown by. I’m more or less settled in now and am kinda figuring out how to climb enough to keep me sane when I’m not working (most of it was deciding to throw the thought of having non-climber friends out the window). Homies from Clemson have been pretty good about coming down to visit, so that’s been nice.

First of all, college football has started back today and I’ve got an idea. It’ll be like those radio shows where the 91st caller wins something, except it’ll be to see who the next person to say “roll tide” to me is, and the prize will be a surprise bicycle kick to the nuts. Sports!

First few holds on Mulletino, a line I appear to be destined never to repeat.

In other news from HP 40, I didn’t do a single move on The Flow (to include the V4 exit). It’s hot and I hate bugs. I’ve also spent 3 or 4 trips trying a stupid dyno next to the Thespian that all my friends do easily, without feet cutting, blah blah blah but George will never do. I miss the days when Adam hadn’t done Millipede.

On the upside, I’ve been trying to clean up all the V3’s in the guidebook this summer and it’s put me on some pretty good stuff. My favorite that I probably wouldn’t have gotten on otherwise (so far) is Ain’t Skeered, right behind the Front Slabs. This thing is tall and sweet, with cool holds and moves to a committing loooong final pull to the lip, just as your holds sort of run out. A recipe for awesome. I’ll try to put a camera on it before too long since there’s not much out there on that one.

Here’s a video from Adam of a weekend at Horse Pens a while back. I try Ain’t Skeered at the end of the vid and get skeered. I earned my sticker now though. I think Jamry will look quite nice with a full-rear-window sized ain’t skeered sticker. Might go ahead and get the confederate flag painted on my roof while I’m at it…

I went on an exploratory mission to Oak Mtn. State Park, which is huge, but doesn’t seem to have much going on by the way of cliffline/boulders. That said, it looks like if you’re into mountain biking, there’s no better place around. There are trails for miles and they seem to be pretty well maintained. Maybe next summer I’ll actually pick up a hobby that allows me to do something besides mope around and watch king of the hill reruns when weather’s not favorable for climbing.

Peavine Falls up at Oak Mtn. State Park. Nice n’ easy .4 mi approach to a pretty cool area (lacking only in the fact that the rock there didn’t really lend itself to climbing, which renders the area pretty much useless to me.

Just exploring around my apartment in hopes of finding a couple boulders.

A few boulders at an athletic complex near my apartment. Unfortunately not too much to get excited about with the exception of one big boulder overhanging on 2 sides. There’s a picture of it 3 pics down.

More from the athletic complex.

Some pretty sweet orange shrooms I couldn’t help but stop and check out.

This boulder seems to hold the most promise at the athletic complex near my apt. I saw what looked like a little bit of chalk on it and it’s right off of the parking lot, so I’m sure it’s been climbed on before but it looks like there’s potential for a handful of decent lines if the moss/ivy come off.

I also made it out to roped climb once (well, twice, but we won’t count the horrendous rain-fest of a weekend we had in Knoxville where I clipped two bolts on some .12c and retreated to the gym for the remainder of the trip). A fella named Mark from the gym was kind enough to take me out and show me the Gray Wall in Little River Canyon, which is loaded up with good lines, as long as 5.11 and up is in your wheelhouse. The canyon is HUGE! Seems like there’s tons of climbing there, and surely a bit that remains to be developed. It’s just reallllly hard to find your way around if you don’t have somebody with you who knows where they’re going. That said, if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands and an adventurous side, it seems like it would be worth your while to go check it out.

Summer’s a bummer. Ready for the cool temps this fall/winter! I’ll post up my list of climbing ambitions for the season before too long for those who care to read/laugh at my struggle to complete it.

I have spirit, but more importantly, I get to spray about a rock climb I did late in the season up at Rumbling Bald. Pit BBQ chewed me up, spat me out, and forced me to skip school and work on a Tuesday, but we finally made it happen and I’ve got a dab-free video to prove it. Enjoy the self-promotional, flip-video quality nonsense! Couldn’t have done it without the spot/motivation from Dylan, who was beating me to all my hardest ascents right before I left Clemson.

Anyway, shortly after graduation, I got word that I would be brought on to the estimating department of Brasfield and Gorrie, one of the largest general contractors in the state of AL. I packed up and spent a couple of weeks at home, then rented a U-HAUL and towed the Jamry down to B-town*, A.K.A. Birm-city*, A.K.A. the HAM*, or more specifically Trussville, where I’ll be located indefinitely. So far I love the area. Work is good, the gym (First Ave. Rocks!) is great, and the climbing in the area is stellar. I’m just down the road about 35-40 mins from HP40, so if you get down that way, come visit me, I finally bought plates. I’ll make you broccoli!

I’ve already scribbled down a little summer circuit that I hope to run at HP40, where I’ll be fighting an onslaught of greasy holds, stingy-buzzy-things, aggressive plants, and nutsweat. However, I’ll be so unbearably strong by this winter, all those brats onsighting 5.16c at the red won’t know what hit them. By January, I will have climbed Slider naked.

*For the record, I don’t think anybody actually calls Birmingham any of these things.

Between the last time I posted and now, a lot has happened. This is not to include me doing any hard rock climbs or editing loads of sweet videos, and especially does not include me ending my season-epic Apocalypse Prow up in Boone (surely nobody has done that hike more than me this year). I went to Rocktown (a bunch), went to Boone (a bunch), went to Hueco*, went to Rumbling Bald (never again!), graduated college**, went to the Red***, got a job, and now I’m going fishing.

I did finally finish up the Hueco video. Here it is. 2 months, a new record.

There is also a video of me putting down one of my long time projies (Pit!) up at Rumbling Bald, so be on the lookout for that now that I’ve got the Hueco video out to satisfy the needy masses.

*I did Moonshine Roof, only took me three years. I rule

**With honors, I rule

***Rain, good thing I was strong enough to climb all the overhanging 5.12’s there****, I rule

We made another trip to Horse Pens 40 this past weekend, and ended up having a real rad weekend. Team DAG (Dale Andy George) held down the fort Friday night and Saturday, with Team DL-OMJ-G-BAB (Dookie-locks-old-man-johnson-grace-b.a.-barackus) showing up on Sunday to close out the weekend. Here’s the rundown.

Friday night, we rolled in and I couldn’t resist. I haven’t been like that in a long time, lately I’ve been pretty patient about sleeping first and climbing the next morning… Anyway, we got out of the car and it was a bit warm, but my skin felt bullet-hard and the rock felt awesome, so Dale psyched me up to head into the boulders and warm up real quick to try Getcha’ Some (V5). Surprisingly enough, I warmed up, did the crux move in a couple tries, then gave it a go from the start and ended up on top. I wish I could do that with projects every time, it’s so nice to have the pressure off a trip quickly so the psyche remains high and you can try new stuff… Alas.

So the next day, we warmed up, team pooped, and got after it. Standard procedure. While Andy was doing his accelerated warm-up thing, I made my way over to Blue Justice (V4) and pieced it together in a couple o’ goes (this was the site of a punt-fest the weekend before). After that, I walked over and Andy did No Tranquility (V9) in like 10 minutes. The boy is too strong. We’re going to have to break his bones. By this time, it’s like 10:15 and Dale is psyched to get on Slider (V9). At 10:30 we decide Dale isn’t all that psyched on Slider after all and move on. Dale is not in his happy place. Andy heads off to open up every double digit project in the park, and me and Dale settle down at the Flow after we all tried the impossible Moon Arete (V6/12) for a bit. After we bailed on that, Andy went to try Illusions (V11) and me and Dale stayed for him to do the Flow (V7) and myself to seal the deal on Mainline (V4). Somewhere in the next 45 minutes, the psyche took a serious swing for the better, and Dale’s trip took off. I did Mainline and then got psyched on Sideline (V5) which now has a tree that ends up in your anus as you top out. We both dabbed (Dale would want me to tell you that he dabbed less than I did), but we both “did” it, then Dale gave the Flow the proverbial ‘one more go’ and sent. This is where he started to send every V7 in the park.

Dale climbing on some of those classic HP40 slopers… The Thief (V7/8) in impeccable focus. Adam Johnson Photo.

Between then and the end of the trip Sunday afternoon, Dale ticked the following (all V7):

The Thief (which Andy also crushed)

It’s a Natural

Slabalicious “oh, that’s V6” SHUTUP

Slush Puppy Low

Cuts Like a Knife Low “oh that’s 5.12+” SHUTUP

Sweet Spot (has anybody ever done this before?)

He also did Gadget Direct (V4/5) and flashed Spirit (V3) for good measure (and to round his Sunday V-point total to north of 50 points… sheesh).

Saturday evening, right before we went to shove Mexican food down our gullets, Andy did the impossible Landslide (V8/13) and the crew left very psyched.

Most of Sunday was spent following Dale around and watching him piss on everything he touched, with the exception of an hour or so spent letting me take sports-action whippers off the top of Mortal Combat (V4) which finally, with the psyche of Andy, Adam, and B.A. Barackus, went down.

A nice shot Adam snapped of me on Mortal Combat a couple of years ago, maybe my first session on it?

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as good as I did sticking the top hold of that climb. Here’s a video:

A couple other things happened. I tried Popeye (V5) and remembered that I can’t campus, I’m not flexible, and I’m a bad rock climber. Whatever. I also did a nice problem near Ten Pins for the first time called Plinko (V3) which I would recommend to anyone.

Very psyched lately. Hueco training regimen is in full swing. Only 3.5 weeks left til we’re on our way out west. Until then, I’ll be in class poking my eyeballs out and watching the second hand until we’re loading up the cars for the trip.

For now, it looks like the weather’s gonna be trash for the next coupla days… gym seshes… maybe Boone this weekend?

This jerk (well, perhaps not this one in particular, but another stupid furry idiot who is clearly blind or doesn’t know well enough to be afraid of his shadow) has sentenced us to an early spring. Between Al Gore’s global warming and weather predicting varmints, we may never get another day of good conditions for as long as we live. Naturally, this will cause an inflation of grades, and soon, Millipede will be V7 again, meaning I won’t even have to rock climb next year to improve my 8a! Maybe Punksuthak;dflj Phil ain’t so bad after all…

I’ve been doing pretty well about getting outside, and even managed to get up to the Bald for a day of demoralizing efforts on projects that I’m not sure I’ll ever do. My efforts on sandstone lately have been much more rewarding. I finally made it up Honky Tonkin’ and Uniball at HP40, both really nice problems (despite the dirt-burgling start on Uniball) and have almost come to terms with the fact that anything harder than V4 there is impossible. I finally had my payday at Zahnd a couple weeks ago and managed to shut down all four problems that remained on my list there (The Turret, Solar Flare, Chisel Chest, and Razor’s Edge). I even remembered to bust out the camera for R.E.! My broski Dylan also managed to put it down just after me for his first of the grade. Nice work bruh! He won’t see this, because a) nobody reads my blog and b) he probably can’t read, but I feel obligated to give him a shout out anyway. Here’s a video.

In other news, it appears as if La Sportiva has discontinued the Speedsters, which is devastating. I broke down and bought a pair of futura’s. Now I’m broke, but on the bright side, Doug says I’m ready for La Dura Dura, plus my shoes match my eyes, which will no doubt have throngs of women chasing me down at the crag.

Hueco is coming up in like 6 weeks, I couldn’t be more stoked. Ready to (hopefully) put old projects down quickly and get psyched on some new ones as well. As for now, I’m feeling trashed. Need to recover and get psyched on getting strong in the coming weeks before heading to Texas!

Since Christmas, I’ve made a handful of trips to the Chattanooga/North Georgia area to dispatch a good bit of stuff from my most recent list, especially from Rocktown. Even managed to do a couple unexpected classics along the way… I’ll leave the spray up to my scorecard (and yes, as a matter of fact, there are people out there logging easy rock climbs…) It’s funny how it feels like doing one boulder problem (Throttle, in my case) can send the season in the right direction. So after a couple 1/2 week or week-long climbing trips, I came back to Lexington to go to my roommate Jon’s wedding. I got word that it was raining in Chatty from some friends, and decided to make it a late night and go do some karaoke with the Lex-bros at Main St. Bar and Grill. We wished Jon and Liz the best, met the black Lt. Dan (who told us Richard Pryor jokes and directed our pursuit of the fairer sex), and I exploded my knee singing the Darkness. I’m not sure what exactly happened to it, but it hurt like hell yesterday. Improvement today was exponential. Hopefully it’s a minor speedbump in an otherwise successful season.

I’ll be heading back to Clemson after I publish this post, to chill out and unpack for a day while I get ready for the next semester, which I hope will be as light as it’s supposed to be. 12 hours, an english class… pretty excited to see what the next semester holds. 2012 was pretty rad, and I’d be stoked if 2013 was half as good.

Well, school is finally out for a few weeks, and now I’m sitting at home staring out the window waiting for the world to dry out so I can get my hands back on some rock. I did squeeze one dry day out this past weekend and made it up to Boone to invest some time in Zen on the Mad Skills Wall at Grandmother Mountain. This thing suits me surprisingly well. The crimps don’t hurt my fingers, I guess they’re just big/sloping enough that I don’t have to close off on them. They almost climb like fingertip-slopers or something. Really rad holds. Anyway, no luck on it this weekend, but I hope to get back to Boone one more time (I’ve been saying that for like 4 trips) to finish the area off for the season and move on to sandstone! It’s hard to turn Boone down when it’s been so warm everywhere else and the highs have been in the 50’s up there…

(Upcoming spray warning) One trip prior to this past weekend, I finally did Throttle. I couldn’t be more excited to move on from it. That thing was HARD for me. It’s nice to finally be able to try other lines at Grandmother without having that thing looming over my head in the warmup area. </spray> That same trip, we also made the hike up to Apocalypse Prow to work that thing out, and surprisingly enough, I was able to do all the moves on it. This thing could be the best line in Boone, if only the hike didn’t put your knees out of commission for the following week.

That’s most of what I have to share lately. Just watching the forecast for 4 or 5 different areas and trying to decide what’s next. Excited to see what the rest of the season holds.

The Friday before last was spent taking Adam on a tour of the new(ish) lines in the Bearfields before the trail day up there the following Saturday. We put some effort into one of the projects up there which should turn out really nice, besides a nasty spray paint mark right on the face. CT… what were you trying to tell us?

Saturday was the trail day, which ended up having a nice turnout of 15 or so folks from Columbia and the Greenville area. We cleaned up a lot of trail (the new approach will be quite a bit longer, unfortunately, especially to the areas west of the Bearfields.) and also hooked up Jedi with a nice set of steps up to the Use the Force boulder. Several large downed trees were removed from the section of the trail between the logging road and the Bearfields. I had to roll out at lunchtime, just as everybody started to climb, but managed to get a quick lap in on the meat grinder problems as well as a few others in the warmup area. Here’s a video of a little circuit I’ve been running in the Bearfields this fall. Slaaabbbsssssssssss

Needing some time on steeper ground, I daytripped Boone Sunday with Brazell. It was warm. 65 degrees the first weekend in December? C’MON SON. Despite the warm (but pleasant) weather, we managed to enjoy the day and climb some nice new lines. We headed straight to upper lost cove and both got on a nice tall face called Foreign Land (V3ish) which was really nice, if for no other reason than to break up the heinous hike a bit. We continued on up towards the top of the mountain to let Brazell get on his project, Downward Dog (V9/10). While he spread out the pads, I ran up top to find and check out Apocalypse Prow (V7). This has to be one of the finest lines I’ve ever seen. Very psyched to get back up there and try it, if I can ever get someone to spot and try it with me psyched on the hike (which was harder than our V3 warmup, and way more sustained). No go on Downward Dog for Ryan this trip, but I’m sure it will come together in colder weather. We started chucking our pads down hill and chased them through the brambles back to the car.

My real hope for the trip was to get on Throttle (V5) at Grandmother, so we drove over to the parking only to find that the road was SOAKING wet. We were going to hike in anyway and see what it looked like, but Drexel and Kelley passed us on the road and were kind enough to turn around and inform us that nothing was dry up there, and invited us to join them on 221. We quickly jumped on board and drove down to M1 where Brazell began working on Instinct (V9) over a sea of pads and I finally nutted up and did M1 (V3). What a classic line, even if it is a bit scurry. Tons of big, jug-tugging moves to the standard Boone heel hook/mantle at a little over 12 or 13 feet.

We then followed Drexel, Kelley, and a few others in their crew up to the Iceberg, which I had wanted to get on for a long time. After warming back up on a nice V3/4ish sloper problem around the corner, we padded up the middle line on the tall Iceberg face (V5ish) and started giving it some burns. It turned out not to be so bad, particularly if you’re tall enough not to have to deadpoint it and you can just lock it off. We spent the rest of the day at the Texas boulder, with me wussing out of the big move at the end of West Texas (V3) and Brazell getting close on What’s East of Texas (V6/7) around the corner. I also tried Cocaine Highway (V5/6) a bit to no avail. We dipped out, thanking the Boone crew for the tour, and wrapped up the day with Brazell quickly putting away What’s Up Arete (V6) and putting a bit of effort into the V7 direct finish. Next time.

It’s almost finals week here in Clemson, which means a lot of stress separated by long periods of studying/climbing between exams, presentations, and projects. I hope to make at least a couple of weekday morning trips up to the Bearfields before starting a long trip next weekend to sandstone and eventually going home for the holidays. Hoping for cool and dry, but we’ll see… see you guys out there!

Edit: I forgot to post this for a few days… I owe another update of the past weekend in Boone…